Asynchronous IO in Postgres 18 TL;DR

Postgres 18 just dropped with a bunch of goodies—UUIDv7, an over-EXPLAIN module, composite index skip scans—and the star feature: native asynchronous I/O. In this episode, Hussein walks through why sync vs. async matters, how Postgres 17 handled I/O, and the hairy challenges that had to be solved to get async I/O into version 18.

You’ll see two new io_method modes—worker (background workers handling I/O) and Linux’s io_uring—alongside the fallback sync mode. The show also teases what’s next: backend writer support, better worker I/O, and direct I/O options. Perfect for anyone curious about squeezing more performance out of Postgres.

Watch on YouTube